Kevin Hother

Itinerant drummer, cyclist, golfer, socialist and surveyor, who clings to AFC Wimbledon and good beer for sanity in a post Brexit/Trump world.

[Aidan Hother @AidanHother]

🎨🎾🏆 End of an era

[Aidan Hother @AidanHother]

🟣 Wimbledon 2024 🟢

Over a week since The Championships and always good to look back at the work created for what is one of my favourite events to work on.

Full project ➡️ https://t.co/dUhnYrk5Ht

#Wimbledon #smsports

[Kevin Hother @KevinKhother]

Stopping of FA Cup replays - FA demonstrate once again their utter contempt for EFL and fans. FA FU.

[Kevin Hother @KevinKhother]

@prodnose Ziggy and Heroes.

[Kevin Hother @KevinKhother]

@mrjamesob I’m confused, is our Prime Minister actually expressing pride at trying to stop these things? It’s difficult to comprehend just how low the Tories’ morals have fallen.

[Kevin Hother @KevinKhother]

@MikeT_RadioWDON Great, thanks.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

A British writer penned the best description of Donald Trump I’ve ever read:

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws �� he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”

-Nate White

[Aidan Hother @AidanHother]

🟣🟢 Wimbledon 2023

Great to work throughout The Championships @Wimbledon creating a wide range of graphics from templates to bespoke reaction pieces.

The full project can be viewed here ➡️ https://t.co/uY7unFWxhx

#Wimbledon #smsports

[Edwin Hayward @edwinhayward]

Here's how the future is going to play out.

(Long - please expand the tweet.)

1. The Tories will wreck everything at an ever increasing pace as the GE approaches, like irresponsible teenagers who know they're not going to be the ones cleaning up the morning after their wild drunken binge.

2. Labour will win the GE on a desperate tide of people wanting to Get the Tories Out, but (and this will be VERY important later) their future freedom to manoevre will be hampered by the bright red lines they laid down on things like Brexit.

3. Labour will start trying to fix some of the stuff the Tories broke. It will prove very expensive. Mending is always more expensive than breaking.

4. Labour will try to Make Brexit Work. The RW tabloids will tear even bigger strips off them than usual.

5. Make Brexit Work won't. Work, that is. Trying to make Brexit work is like trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube after you've brushed your teeth with it.

6. Meanwhile, Labour are having to spend more more more just to keep stuff from literally falling apart (think sewers, water pipes, collapsing schools, crumbling hospitals etc.)

7. Tories watch from the sidelines, laughing and jeering. "Typical Labour. Always spending money they don't have."

8. If they're VERY lucky, Labour will go into the GE-after-next with the overall situation in Britain slightly better than it was when they took office. The country will only be knee-deep in metaphoric and real sewage, rather than thigh deep.

9. The Tories and the RW media will tag team to blame everything that's (still) broken in Britain on Labour. "Same old Labour. Can't be trusted with the economy. Can't be trusted with anything. Can't even fix Brexit, despite their lofty promises."

(Important intermission: Labour will never get fair coverage in our British media. But this is a "known known". They need to figure out how to win, repeatedly, anyway.)

10. GE2: Electric Boogaloo. Labour are stuck. The taunts about having failed their flagship Brexit fixing policy hit home, because they're true. That lubricates the way for all the lies the Tories and RW media are spinning about their wider performance to slip down like honey.

IF Labour pivot towards SM/CU/Rejoin, they might as well tattoo "we wasted 5 years because we didn't have a clue about what we were doing when it comes to Brexit" across their collective foreheads. They may pivot anyway, because the alternative is even worse. This is where those bright red lines (remember them?) will bite them in the fundament so hard they won't be able to sit down for the next six months. Because the press can absolutely legitimately scream "U-turn! Come and see the U-turn so big, it's visible from the Moon." And it will be true.

(Absolutely critical point: there is no "Get the Tories Out" vote. "Ooh, the scary Tories will get back in if you don't vote for us" doesn't have anything like the same impact, especially with non-core Labour voters who lent their votes last time but who are absolutely livid about Labour's failing approach to the Brexit they detest.)

11. Labour lose GE2. A one-term wonder, and they're done. The Tories do what they do best: keep blaming everything on Labour, while picking their looting back up where they left off last time.

-----------

Scroll back up through the scenario above, and look at how Brexit runs through it like a vein pumping pure poison.

That is why Labour need to change their fundamental approach to Brexit, and they need to do so now.

Stop ruling anything out (not saying you won't do something isn't the same as proactively saying you will). Think along the lines of "Labour will do whatever it takes to mitigate the damage Brexit is causing". Make the change far enough ahead of the GE that the fuss about the U-turn is reduced to the constant every-day moaning and carping of the RW press by the time the GE comes around.

Also, Labour need to reconsider PR. It's the only hope they (and we) have of anything approaching long-term stability.

Many of the problems Britain faces will take 2, 3, 4+ election cycles to fix. And they need to be fixed. But the only conceivable way of getting the time necessary to do so is to form long-term partnerships via PR.

That way, you get rid of the short-termism that has dominated British politics to the ruin of us all. (In the current 5-year political cycle, the first year is spent learning the ropes and the last gearing up for the GE, so there are really only 3 even vaguely "productive" years to be wrung out of incumbency.)

Phew, and we're done. You may disagree. You probably will disagree. But please take a very deep breath and a big step back, and think about whether your disagreement comes because it feels genuinely too horrible to contemplate the real world in the stark terms I painted above, and whether your support for a particular political party is blinding you to the reality of what they can achieve in a short 5-year (really 3) period in office.

[Tom London @TomLondon6]

What. Is. The. Point. Of. Starmer’s. Labour. Party?

[Kevin Hother @KevinKhother]

@campbellclaret Michael Fabricant.

[Peter Stefanovic @PeterStefanovi2]

Next week the Government plans to restrict the public’s right to protest & is using an unprecedented abuse of power to get away with it. WE ARE FACING AN ALMOST COMPLETE MEDIA BLACKOUT. I’m doing all I can to get the word out. PLEASE HELP BY RETWEETING & FOLLOWING. This is a make or break moment for parliamentary democracy

[Kevin Hother @KevinKhother]

@TitanicBrewers Will be looking out for these!

[Kevin Hother @KevinKhother]

@LeroySkeete Only 50?!

[Cassetteboy @Cassetteboy]

New! The Kunts vs Cassetteboy - F*ck the Tories

We can't have a General Election, but we can take over the Christmas charts. Stream and download now, details at https://t.co/yYYx1ZdcLK

#AnyoneButThem

[Kevin Hother @KevinKhother]

A fairly long but excellent synopsis of where we now stand.

[George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot]

Here’s where I think we now stand, and how we should respond. A thread.
1. There is a global trend towards political impunity. In many nations, politicians are testing the limits of constitutional power, and discovering they can get away with almost anything. 🧵

[George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot]

Here’s where I think we now stand, and how we should respond. A thread.
1. There is a global trend towards political impunity. In many nations, politicians are testing the limits of constitutional power, and discovering they can get away with almost anything. 🧵

[Gordon Brown @GordonBrown]

It’s all there in Britannia Unchained, co-authored by Liz Truss and Kwarteng: the pound can collapse, borrowing and mortgages can soar, pensioners can freeze, kids can go hungry, as long as the economy is ripe for venture capitalists freed from regulation and, ideally, tax.